Security News
A Florida teen accused of masterminding the hacks of several high-profile Twitter accounts last summer as part of a widespread cryptocurrency scam pled guilty to fraud charges in exchange for a three-year prison sentence. On July 15, 2020, Twitter suffered one of the biggest security lapses in its history after the attackers managed to hijack nearly 130 high-profile Twitter accounts pertaining to politicians, celebrities, and musicians, including that of Barack Obama, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Uber, and Apple.
A Florida teenager has pleaded guilty to fraud charges after coordinating the hack of high-profile Twitter accounts to run a cryptocurrency scam that collected roughly $120,000 worth of bitcoins. Graham Ivan Clark was charged last year as an adult in July 2020, he turned 18 in January 2021, as the first suspect and the one who orchestrated last year's Twitter hack.
Russian authorities said Tuesday they would block Twitter in a month if it doesn't take steps to remove banned content, a move that escalates the Russian government's drawn-out standoff with social media platforms that have played a major role in amplifying dissent in Russia. Russia's state communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, last week announced it was slowing down the speed of uploading photos and videos to Twitter over its alleged failure to remove content encouraging suicide among children and information about drugs and child pornography.
Twitter on Monday announced that users with two-factor authentication enabled can now use multiple security keys to protect their accounts. The social platform has had support for security keys for desktop users for some time, and made the feature available to iOS and Android users too in December 2020.
Twitter has added support for multiple security keys to accounts with two-factor authentication enabled for logging into the social network's web interface and mobile apps. "Secure your account with multiple security keys," Twitter said.
A bug on Twitter is causing users to become temporarily suspended if they tweet the word 'Memphis,' BleepingComputer has confirmed. This bug started today after users tweeting about the Tennessee city, sports teams, or players suddenly found that they were temporarily suspended for 12 hours after Tweeting the word Memphis.
Threat actors have started to use 'Promoted' tweets, otherwise known as Twitter ads, to spread cryptocurrency giveaway scams. For some time, BleepingComputer has been reporting on scammers hacking into verified Twitter accounts to promote fake cryptocurrency giveaway scams.
Cryptocurrency scammers have made at least $145,000 this week by promoting fake giveaways through hacked verified Twitter accounts. At the time, these scams pulled in a massive $580,000 in cryptocurrency over a one-week period.
Twitter this week announced that it has suspended multiple accounts that were found to be part of four networks involved in disinformation activities associated with Armenia, Iran, and Russia. The threat actors behind these accounts are believed to be state-sponsored, and Twitter permanently suspended all four networks, for violating its manipulation policies.
Twitter has removed dozens of accounts connected to Russian government-backed actors disseminating disinformation and targeting the European Union, the United States, and the NATO alliance. These accounts were part of two separate networks with Russian links, each of them specialized in targeting different entities.